Application of a Science Of Freedom.
Transcript of the video Rudolf Steiner | Advancing From Critical Social Justice To Freedom
Video link: https://youtu.be/wjuTW1698po
Contrasting the ideas of Critical Social Justice with the ideas of Rudolf Steiner in The Philosophy Of Freedom.
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Tom Last March 2022
www.philosophyoffreedom.com
TRANSCRIPT
Critical Social Justice Ideas
Materialistic View
Group Identity
Academic Knowledge
Social Construction Of Human Being
Conflict Theory
Microaggression
Woke Projection
Social Construction Of Truth
Absurd Ideas
Systems Of Oppression
Lived Experience
Political Correctness
Accusations Of Racism
Disadvantage And Privilege
Anti-Racist Training
Pessimism For Cultural Activism
Social Justice Studies
Materialistic View
In this video I will go through The Philosophy Of Freedom chapter by chapter to contrast the critical Social Justice view of the human being with Rudolf Steiner's view of the human being. It can be used as a reference to show how Critical Social Justice Theory and its Critical Race Theory has very little to offer Waldorf Education or any other Anthroposophical initiative. A link to the transcript will be in the video description box.
The view of the human being, according to Critical Social Justice, has gained a following because it gives a simplistic description of the most visible aspects of human nature that many people can relate to. These common human characteristics express our well known undeveloped state. But there is more to the human being that requires more effort to recognize.
"The concept of the human being is not complete unless it includes the free spirit as the purest expression of human nature." TPOF 9.11
Critical Social Justice Theory does not include an understanding of the human Free Spirit. This is why it is a Materialistic view of the human being. The cognitive and ethical states of Critical Social Justice Theory are found throughout The Philosophy Of Freedom because Rudolf Steiner uses this as the starting point and then advances to higher levels of development.
Group Identity
For example, in Chapter 14 Individuality And Type, it begins with a description of a person who identifies as a member of an ethnic group.
"How the single member is constituted and his general behavior will be determined by the character of the ethnic group. If we ask why a particular thing about a person is like this or like that, we are directed away from the individual person and toward his group type." TPOF 14.1
The thoughts and behavior expressed by someone who identifies as a group member are determined by the group which directs us away from their unique individual characteristics. From this starting point Chapter 14 advances from Group Identity to learning how to recognize a Free Spirit, our True Self. It is more difficult to identify unique individual characteristics because you have to get to know each person individually.
It is the same in each chapter of The Philosophy Of Freedom. Each chapter advances from the undeveloped immature human being understood by Critical Social Justice to the mature Free Individuality. A study of The Philosophy Of Freedom will remove the blinders of the Materialistic View and open the eyes to our True Self.
Academic Knowledge
Now lets go through The Philosophy Of Freedom chapter by chapter. In the original introduction to The Philosophy Of Freedom, The Goal Of Knowledge, we advance from the outer truth of Academic Knowledge to the facts we know from direct experience and the inner truth that intuitively springs from within. Academic Knowledge comes from the outside, it raises doubts within us.
"Truth that comes to us from the outside always brings with it uncertainty. We are only convinced by what appears to each of us inwardly as truth... We do not want the kind of knowledge that has been encased in rigid academic rules, and stored away as valid for all time." TPOF 0.1
Social Justice Theory is outer truth formulated in the universities by ivory tower professors and then crammed into the heads of students. It is not education, it is re-education. You do not learn how to think, you learn what to think.
The Philosophy Of Freedom presents a science of freedom to bring the student to a recognition of the truth being presented. Proper study of The Philosophy Of Freedom brings conviction because its truths can be verified within through reasoned examination and introspective observation.
"Only truth can give us certainty in the development our individual powers. Whoever is tormented by doubts finds his powers weakened. If baffled by a world full of riddles he can find no goal for his creative activity." TPOF 0.2
In this video we will see how Social Justice truths weaken a person while the truths of The Philosophy Of Freedom empower a person to set life goals that will be achieved.
Social Construction Of Human Being
Chapter 1, Conscious Human Action, begins with the question:
"Is a human being free in thought and action, or compelled by the unyielding necessity of natural law?" TPOF 1.0
Social Justice Theory answers the question of freedom with a resounding no to freedom. A key foundation principle of Critical Social Justice is the social construction of the human being: Cultural Determinism. We are not free but rather constructed by the inescapable necessity of social and cultural influences. This is why Group Identity is central to Social Justice and individuality is dismissed as an illusion.
The Philosophy Of Freedom begins with this undeveloped state and advances to an independent thinking individualist who overcomes Cultural Determinism.
Conflict Theory
Chapter 2, The Desire For Knowledge, describes how once we begin to have thoughts we become critical and are dissatisfied with the world. This primal dissatisfaction is resolved on the inner path to true knowledge.
Critical Social Justice remains in our unreconciled critical nature. It is based on Marxist Conflict Theory. Conflict Theory is a way of thinking that sees the world as a never-ending conflict between Oppressor and Oppressed groups that fight each other for control of limited resources and opportunity. This, again, is a one-sided Materialistic view that tries to explain the human condition on external world circumstances.
Conflict Theory replaces a healthy desire for knowledge with Confirmation Bias. It seeks out information to confirm the one-sided conflict theory narrative. It ignores the fact that the primal conflict exists within our own consciousness.
Before we can heal the world, we need to heal our self. The only way to resolve this inner conflict is to overcome bias by grasping the true nature of the world. We are unable to create a better world if we are unable to understand the existing world.
"We must seek out this essence of Nature in us, and then we will discover our connection with her once more... We can find nature outside us only if we first know her within us. What corresponds to nature within us will be our guide." TPOF 2.9
Microaggression
In Chapter 3 we advance from passive feeling to becoming an active thinker that can learn about the world. Feelings just happen to us while thinking requires effort. Experiencing a Microaggression is a feeling that just happen to us. As part of the unhealthy focus on Group Identity and Oppression Critical Social Justice teaches people to become more sensitive to and aware of slight Microaggressions.
A Microaggression happens to someone who identifies as a member of a group. Then whenever small slights or messages negative to the group are read into a situation the group member experiences hurt feelings of anxiety and stress.
In chapter 3 we learn that being offended tells us nothing about the world or other people, it only tell us about our own personality.
"When I am reflecting about an event, I am not concerned with how it affects me. I learn nothing at all about myself by knowing the concepts corresponding to the observed change in a pane of glass caused by a stone thrown against it. But I learn a great deal about my personality when I know the feeling that an event arouses in me." TPOF 3.2
Our feeling reactions merely tell us about our own personality. To learn about the world or other people or even to learn about our own feeling reactions requires that we think.
Woke Projection
Chapter 4 is a study of the perception process. We learn about Perception Bias and how the perceived world can merely be a psychological projection. To advance we must continually correct our world-pictures.
Critical Social Justice holds onto a single world-picture of oppression and racism. When you become "Woke" you are able to see a world full of injustice. Seeing injustice everywhere is simply a Woke projection inserted between the real world and the contemplating mind.
Social Construction Of Truth
Chapter 5 is called Knowing The World. We advance from Perception Bias to an awakened state of thinking. Knowing the world requires developing true judgment.
"If I wish to say anything about [life], I can do so only with the help of thinking... If my thought does not apply to the world, then my result is false. Between a perception and every kind of judgment about it there intervenes thinking." TPOF 5.2
Critical Social Justice rejects the idea that knowledge gives us truths about reality. Instead it believes knowledge is a social construction that is only true relative to a particular culture. All truth is merely subjective and relative.
Truth is not something to be discovered. Truth is to be established by controlling a narrative. Censorship and cancel culture are tools to establish truth by controlling the social narrative. This social justice view is proven false by the fact that universal truths are discovered that all cultures will embrace. This is what makes science international.
Absurd Ideas
We know the world by discovering the concepts that are inseparably connected with the observed event. The concept parabola is indivisibly bound up with the flight of a ball. The concept explains a thing and makes it understandable.
In Chapter 6, Human Individuality, the conceptual knowledge that grasps the world is individualized into a Reality-Based idea. Good ideas are Reality-Based. Bad ideas are not.
Critical Social Justice comes up with bad ideas because its narrow worldview blinds them to knowing the world. The result is absurd ideas such as abolish the police, abolish education, cultural appropriation and equity based on the belief that differences in group outcomes can only be explained by discrimination.
Systems Of Oppression
Chapter 7 asks whether their are limits to knowledge. It begins with a Hypothetically-Assumed World Principle and advances to a scientific view that seeks the natural laws that explain the observed world.
"Every kind of reality that is assumed to exist outside the realm of perception and conception must be assigned to the limbo of unverified hypotheses. It is not surprising that the Dualistic thinker is unable to find a connection between his hypothetically-assumed world principle and the facts given in experience." TPOF 7.1
Critical Social Justice is constructed on a Hypothetically-Assumed World Principle that everything —every action, every person, every institution, and every outcome— is based on race and power. Even though this Assumed World Principle does not match up with the facts you are not allowed to question it. This Assumed Principle sets insurmountable limits to our knowledge. The task is not the pursuit of truth, but to find stories that support the injustice narrative.
Lived Experience
In Chapter 8, The Factors Of Life, we learn about the error of using the Naive Knowledge of feeling and willing as the sole means of knowing reality. Critical Social Justice attempts to verify their assumption of Systems Of Oppression with "Lived Experience".
Lived Experience is not merely a report of personal life experience. It is experience that has been "interpreted" as an example of Oppression. You are not allowed to challenge a person's claim of Oppression.
The Philosophy Of Freedom realizes that Naive Experience is not science. Lived Experience needs the same evidential and analytical scrutiny as anything else for it to be taken seriously.
Political Correctness
In chapter 9, The Idea Of Freedom, we advance from social conformity to free community. Critical Social Justice attempts to build a new social order by demanding conformity to the rules of Political Correctness and Identity Politics.
Those who disobey are publicly shamed, censored or de-platformed. If you do not tweet the right tweet or share the right slogan your whole life can be ruined.
"The Moralist believes that a social community is possible only if all are united by a common moral order. He fails to see that the world of Ideas that inspires me is none other than the one inspiring my neighbor." TPOF 9.10"
The Philosophy Of Freedom advances from moral conformity to a social order based on free thinking and expression. Because we share the same world of universal ideals it is possible to build a free community based on a Harmony Of Intentions.
"If our source truly is the world of Ideas, and we do not obey any external impulses (physical or spiritual), then we can only meet in the same striving, in the same intentions." TPOF 9.10"
Accusations Of Racism
Chapter 10 discusses moral authority. We are free when we are the moral authority of our own life and obey our own ethical impulses. We are not free when we obey our animal instincts or the moral dictates of others.
To bring about change Critical Social Justice considers it each person's duty to call out another person's racist behavior. "It is not enough to be non-racist, you must be anti-racist” by correcting the behavior of others. If the accused person denies being a racist they are next accused of White Fragility.
Chapter 10 establishes a process for calling out another persons improper behavior. It requires the accuser to identify the specific person, policy or institutional practice that drove the person to act in an improper way.
"If someone claims that the action of another person is done unfreely, then he must identify the thing or the person or the institution within the perceptible world, that made this person act." TPOF 10.6"
It is not acceptable for the accuser to make general claims such as "all white people are racist" or "all institutions are systemically racist". It is not acceptable for the accuser to claim that another person is controlled by unknown unconscious motivations. If the cause that motivated the alleged racism can't be identified the accusation must be rejected.
"If the claimant bases his assertion upon motivating causes of action lying outside the real world that is accessible to the human being through his senses and intellect, then Monism must reject such an assertion." TPOF 10.6"
Disadvantage And Privilege
Critical social justice sees each person's destiny set at birth according to privilege or disadvantage. People of color will have less successful outcomes than white people who have a much greater chance of success because of privilege.
We advance from this view in Chapter 11 Life Purpose by realizing that our life is not set on a fixed route. We chose our own destiny at every moment.
"What is one's task in life? Monism can only answer: The task he sets himself. I have no predestined mission in the world; it is at every moment the one I choose. I do not set out on life's journey confined to a fixed route." TPOF 11.7
Anti-Racist Training
In chapter 12, Moral Imagination, we learn about a free deed. We are free when we act on our own ideas and unfree when we act on ideas that someone else has implanted in our head.
Critical Social Justice is not only against actions, it is especially against impure thoughts. The Woke mob, tech giants, employers and the government act together as thought-police to control thought.
When accused of impure thought a person is expected to publicly confess their racism. Anti-Racist Training sessions may also include the public confession of racism. This practice is an attempt to enslave the human spirit.
"A community does not produce genuine slaves until its teachers regard themselves as advisers of conscience, and the believers must come to them (to the confessional) to receive the motives for their actions from them." TPOF 12.12
Anti-Racist Training in schools, businesses and other institutions enslave people when the trainers become advisers of conscious and implant their motives into the heads of the participants.
Activism For Cultural Progress
Critical Social Justice presents a Pessimistic view of the world in an attempt to motivate selfless activism for cultural progress. Instead, its followers develop anxiety disorders. Young people no longer want to bring children into a world filled with oppression, hate and environmental doom.
In chapter 13 The Value Of Life we advance from pessimism to the pleasure of striving for our individual goals. The Ethical Individualist is motivated by the driving force of the human spirit. It is not necessary to indoctrinate a person into a particular "cause" in order for them to do good works. Cultural progress depends on the all-around development of the human being who will then be a contributor to society.
"What is called 'the Good' is not what a person ought to do, but what he wants to do when he expresses his fully developed true human nature." TPOF 13.11
Social Justice Studies
In Chapter 14 Individuality And Type we learn how useless Social Justice degrees are for learning about actual people. You will learn nothing about an actual human being in a university Ethnic Studies, Gender Studies or Women's Studies program. Please don't hire them.
"The characteristics of race, ethnicity, nation and sex are the subjects of specific branches of study. Only a person who wishes to live as nothing more than an example of a type could possibly fit the general picture that emerges from this kind of academic study. None of these branches of study are able to reach the unique character of the single individual." TPOF 14.5
Today's Academic study of the human being merely produces a picture of a stereotype. You could call The Philosophy Of Freedom "Individuality Studies" where you will learn what to look for, how to know and how to become a unique individuality.
As we can clearly see the way of thinking and the moral order of Critical Social Justice Theory has little to offer other than a picture of the undeveloped state of human nature.
These are just a few examples. The Philosophy Of Freedom can be opened to any page and more examples can be found because Critical Social Justice Theory truly is the opposite of what Rudolf Steiner intended.
If you take the path to real freedom described in The Philosophy Of Freedom you will attain what you seek to achieve in life and much more and you will be the source of real cultural progress.
"Freedom is the only word which has a ring of immediate truth today… If, instead of such slogans as peace founded on justice, or peace imposed by force, people would only speak of peace based on freedom, then this word would echo round the world and kindle in the hearts of all a sense of security."
1918 From Symptom To Reality in Modern History Lecture VI: Brief Reflections on the Publication of the New Edition of 'The Philosophy of Freedom'
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